Gastón: How did your storytelling work develop in France?
Souleymane: Stories and music cannot be separated, either in Africa or here in Europe. The first thing I did was tell stories on Radio France (France Culture), and this is how I was discovered somehow by Milán et Jeunesse editions. They asked me to write the stories that come from my family; my mother and grandfather told them to me. There are also stories of mine that join together African culture and Platonic philosophy, which I studied for a long time. I took these two sources because deep inside I don’t want to be labeled “African,” or “African musician,” or “African storyteller.” I dislike it and do not find it right. I prefer to be labeled human.
Gastón: Why Plato?
Souleymane: Because Plato allowed me to understand African philosophy much better. For example, when one reads Plato on morals, or on life or death, one finds African traditions on these topics. Plato gave me theory. In Africa we don’t explain things but we listen to words and stories. Plato gave me the keys to understand many of such stories from a theoretical perspective, particularly metaphysical. An example: the myth of the cave. We have almost the same story but in the African tale there is a group of men that live in a village surrounded by a forest and because of this they cannot leave. The men’s thoughts, their philosophy depends on what they can see and experience in the town because they do not know the outside. One day, a goat escapes from the town, and sees the world and understands that life in the village is very limited. Departing from the goat’s experience the villagers change their worldview. In Africa we have a saying: “He who travels much, sees much.” That means truth does not stop at the tip of our nose. For me every individual, every people, contribute with a stone to the building of thought, of philosophy. Senegal gives one stone, Ghana another one, Colombia, why not, another one. If a person thinks that philosophy is only what has been established as a system in Europe, my words will seem ridiculous or absurd to him. For me Plato and Africa are not very far apart. History, men, have distanced them.
Gastón: Are there other Western thinkers and philosophers that are part of your stories?
Souleymane: Yes, but à la africaine, without hierarchy or order. They are present in an intimate manner. Spinoza, for example. From him, I was interested in the history of faith. Although he received a rigorous Jewish education he put dogma in doubt. In Africa we have thinkers that may be placed between Plato and Spinoza. Every reality is nothing other than a manifestation of God Himself, which is a unique, eternal, and infinite substance. It is a naturalistic view of the world, almost animistic, for which the essential aspect is controlling passions in order to be virtuous and then reach happiness. Man, not religion, faces divine truth. What to do about this conundrum? For Africans divine truth is a revelation. Spinoza unites divine and earthly issues. Truth is explained through revelation. For Europeans this is very Christian but it is also animistic. For us it is neither Christian nor animistic. Truth is found in revelation and every person must adapt it to his understanding and interpret it in the way in which he feels he can accept it with utmost conviction. For me that is a very African way of thinking. By reading Spinoza I got to Kierkegaard. I was particularly interested in Diary of a Seducer. When one enters a church, one becomes a contemporary of those who built it, people who died hundreds of years ago. I am interested in the idea that you enter a space and can comprehend why humans have built something with faith and love. It is the philosophy of love and faith departing from what has been realized. I am not a practicing believer of the church, the synagogue, the mosque, or any temple, but I respect people’s spirituality. This is the reason for my interest in elements from Socrates, Plato, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, and Diogenes, for example. There is much of traditional African philosophy in the Greek cynics. Diogenes lived in a barrel in order to teach. Real griots4 live under similar conditions. For Africans the real teacher, he who has wisdom, teaches under similar circumstances. He distances himself from everything and lives humbly and freely. In Africa we say total freedom is to not own any property.
Gastón: Like Spinoza, who did not accept a directorship at a University in order to be free to think and write.
Souleymane: Sure. If one owns a house, one is already a prisoner. One has to find a stick to guard the house so that strangers do not enter. Even if the cynics’ philosophy about absolute humility and freedom to teach is very far away in time from us, it is very close to the African way of thinking. Diogenes left the academy and any institutions and went to live in a barrel. Seneca is also close to this worldview, which has allowed me to go back to Africa through Western philosophy. Studying philosophy has helped me reencounter and rethink African thought and tradition. I have found a universal philosophy, not in the Eurocentric sense but in an inclusive sense that melts together all human philosophies.
Listen to AUDIO III from interview with Souleymane Mbodj (G. Alzate, 2011).
Gastón: What is the building process in your stories? Do you depart from an African tale and little by little start incorporating elements of Western philosophy?
Souleymane: Everything I narrate relates to what I believe in. When I write a story I take the motif from the African oral tradition that I know, and I join it together with the old Greek philosophical tradition, or other traditions, like Maimonides’. He is another philosopher from the Middle Ages who is of great interest to me, because he made an effort to link faith and reason. I take the elements I care about from diverse places. As beautiful or interesting as an element may be from a narrator’s perspective, I always start from something I strongly believe. I may read and enjoy other things but I don’t talk about those. As I said before, I do not have a label on my forehead saying “African,” “Parisian,” or “Senegalese.” I believe this way of facing Western culture and other cultures in general is what has allowed me to know the world, to know you, for example. If I had stayed in Africa inside the African formal tradition it would have been very hard for me to see others. There are people who can do it but it is really difficult. If the door is closed, and my house has no windows, I cannot see what is going on outside.
- Griots are storytellers who are masters of words and music. They maintain the memory of the community and perform many other key societal roles. [↩]